Insurance rates rise beyond their reach
One in five Pasco homes is not insured, and many say a recent increase in homeowners insurance rates left them no choice.
By GARRETT THEROLF
Published January 29, 2006
Bertil Haney's letter to the editor was a cry for emancipation.
"Simply DROP your (homeowner's) insurance," he wrote.
The message was published recently in the Times after news that Citizen's Property Insurance Corp. had approved a 139-percent rate increase for portions of Pasco County.
"Let's buck up and just flat refuse to go along like a bunch of sheep! Let's take care of OURSELVES and be FREE for a change!"
The county commission subsequently shoved aside their regular agenda to denounce the idea, warning that any followers could risk financial devastation.
Anyone with a mortgage is likely blocked or would face penalties without insurance, in addition to the potential total loss that homeowners who own their homes outright could face in a major disaster.
Nevertheless, one out of five Pasco residents don't have homeowners insurance. A Times review of property and insurance records shows that 25,000 out of 125,000 single family homes in the county are uninsured.
The homeowners who've made the decision call it "going bare." "We had no other choice," said Doreen Linton, a 45-year-old mother with three children at her Holiday home.
The rates for the family's Citizens policy increased in October from $352 to $777 for the year, payable in one lump sum.
"We are just a working family," Linton said. Her family survives on her husband's $37,000 salary as a maintenance worker.
In December, she and her husband, Terry, fell behind in their insurance payments.
They soon joined the ranks of the uninsured.
Once they were left "bare," the Lintons found that made it even harder to get back into the world of the insured.
"I called Citizens two days after receiving a letter saying that my insurance had been canceled and the first thing they told me is that the price had already gone up to $1,300," Doreen Linton said.
Turns out that her request for "new" insurance triggered a reassessment of her home at a higher value than the one previously on file. The county property appraiser values it at $91,113.
"Unless we get a really large tax rebate this year, we're going to be left out," Terry said.
Credit counselor Renee Hanneman, who works in Pasco, said the struggle against high insurance rates is a problem she is seeing more and more often.
"I see people almost daily borrowing against the equity in their home to pay their insurance rates," Hanneman said.
In response to Haney's urging to willfully drop insurance, however, County Commissioner Steve Simon halted the rest of a recent commission meeting to speak directly to the television cameras, calling Haney's suggestion "a folly" and "an inappropriate source of civil disobedience."
"If you have any incumberance at all, if there is a mortgage, if the noteholder is worth anything, the entire amount due will be due on an accelerated schedule when they find you have nothing to insure the investment," Simon said.
Other commissioners noted that the high number of uninsured homes in New Orleans plays prominently in the struggle to rebuild there.
They didn't offer a solution, but there is always the other alternative out from under the rising rates: moving away.
A prominent Realtor in the county said large numbers of Pasco homeowners are choosing that option.
"What's going to happen once again is that we are going to have a demographic shift," Chuck Grey said. "People that have larger incomes are going to come in."
Realtor Greg Armstrong, who collects statistics on the turnover, said the numbers marked a big increase in homes on the market after Citizens began to indicate in October that another big rate increase was on the way.
"We called it the Halloween spook," Armstrong said.
"Between Nov. 1 and Dec. 10. ... there was only one gulf access home that went into contract. More than 100 went on the market," Armstrong said. "A year ago, we were looking at the number of hours or days it would take for anything to sell."
Garrett Therolf can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6232 or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6232. His e-mail address is gtherolf@sptimes.com